For decades, the mental image of a Catholic priest in many people's minds was a ruddy-faced man with a brogue or someone with the surname D'Amici.

On Friday morning, three Vietnamese-born men named Bui, Ngo and Phan became the newest priests in the Diocese of San Bernardino, reflecting today's face of the priesthood in the Inland area. They were joined near the altar of a Chino Hills church by Rogelio Gonzalez, a Mexican-born man who Friday took the last step before his scheduled initiation as a priest in October.

Over the past four years, all 14 priests ordained in the diocese have been Latino or Asian. The diocese encompasses Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Nationally, 69 percent of priests being ordained this year are white, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Washington, D.C.-based Catholic research group.

The greater diversity of the Inland area's population partially explains the difference, said professor Timothy Matovina, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame.

Nationwide, about 58 percent of Catholics are white, non-Hispanic; in the Inland area, the diocese estimates that 39 percent are white, non-Hispanic.

Matovina said the Diocese of San Bernardino has earned a nationwide reputation for being especially welcoming of diversity.

"It's known as a diocese whose leadership is very involved in multicultural outreach," he said. "Bishop Barnes is highly respected in this regard."

The Spanish-speaking Bishop Gerald Barnes is of mostly Mexican ancestry and has headed national church committees and subcommittees on multicultural outreach, immigration and Hispanic issues.

The Rev. Alex Gamino, a Latino who was ordained last year, said the block-by-block diversity of the Inland area helped spur him to become a priest. Unlike in parts of Los Angeles County, people of different ethnic groups typically live and worship in the same parishes in the Inland area, he said.

In the Los Angeles parish he attended when he was growing up, almost all the members were Latino. Gamino's family moved to Moreno Valley in 1995. His parish there, St. Christopher, has a mix of Latino, white, Asian and black parishioners.

"There's more of an acute awareness of the needs of the church when you have so much variety and so many different cultures coming together," he said.

PRIESTHOOD CHANGING

The Diocese of San Bernardino stands out even in culturally diverse Southern California. In the neighboring Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 17 of the 49 priests ordained between 2002 and 2010 were white. In the San Diego diocese, four of the last nine newly ordained priests were white, and in the Diocese of Orange, three of the 13 priests ordained since 2006 have been white. The rest were Asian.

Overall, more than 90 percent of U.S. priests are white, an indication of how the overwhelming majority of seminarians one and two generations ago was white, said Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at the Catholic research center. The average age of priests is 60.

In the San Bernardino diocese, about 29 percent of priests are white, 33 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, 31 percent Hispanic and 6 percent black. That number is a major shift from years past, said John Andrews, diocese spokesman. Andrews said that at a recent luncheon for retired priests, he saw only two non-white faces among the 20 to 25 men.

A third of priests in the diocese are foreign-born. About 21 percent of the Inland area's residents were born abroad, according to U.S. Census estimates.

U.S. Catholic priests always have been disproportionately immigrants, Matovina said. A century ago, that meant largely Irish, Italian and other European immigrants, he said. Now it primarily means Latin Americans and Asians.

A difference today is that, except for the English-speaking Irish priests, most foreign-born clergy in the early 1900s tended to minister to parishioners from their homelands. Today, with far fewer priests in the United States than a few decades ago, foreign-born priests are more likely to work in primarily English-speaking parishes, Matovina said.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

The priesthood often carries more prestige among immigrants, Matovina said.

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